Irish pension funds recovered some lost ground in July, after losses in May and June and the average managed fund returned 2.2% for the month. Setanta Asset Management took top spot with a return of 3.2% for the month, while Eagle Star/Zurich Life propped up the league table with a 1.2% return. Inflation adjusted returns over 10 years negative.

The average managed fund has advanced 4.2% over the first seven months of the year; with returns ranging from a high of 5.9% (Standard Life Investments) to a low of 2.8% (Aviva Investors). Over the past twelve months all of the managed funds surveyed delivered double-digit growth, with the average fund returning 13.5%. Returns for the past year ranged from 16.5% (Standard Life Investments) to 11.7% (AIB Investment Managers).

Fiona Daly, Managing Director, Rubicon Investing Consulting, commented: "The average managed fund return has been a very disappointing -7.6% per annum over the past three years. The five year returns to the end of July are mostly negative, with an average return of -0.3% per annum over this period. Irish group pension managed fund returns over the past ten years have been a disappointing 0.5% per annum on average, well below the Irish inflation rate of 2.5% per annum over the same time horizon. Indeed, none of the managed funds surveyed outperformed inflation over this period, while four of the ten funds failed to deliver positive returns over 10 years."

On Tuesday, Hewitt Associates released its InVision survey of Irish pension funds for the second quarter 2010.

The survey shows a range of performances across the different funds. The Standard Life GARS fund is the top performing multi asset fund, with a year to date performance of +6.5% through the end of June. The Friends First/F&C Diversified Growth is the poorest performing year to date, returning -4.2%.

"We recommend that investors consider multi asset funds in place of traditional managed funds as in many cases these have superior risk/return profiles and access new asset classes not previously available to smaller DB Schemes or DC Schemes," commented Deborah Reidy of Hewitt Associates. "However, the wide range in returns of Multi Assets funds over the last several months highlights the importance of knowing the underlying investments of the funds on offer."

"For the six months to the end of June, we see a range of 10.7% between the top and bottom performing funds. With a greater variety of asset classes available to fund managers, different multi asset funds will have substantially different performances," noted Reidy. "Investors should be aware of the underlying exposure of their funds to understand how market movements will affect the overall performance."

Hewitt Multi Asset fund Performance July 2010

Returns for all managers over all periods for the past 20+ years can be found here.